1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the mounting of toilet seats on toilet bowls. More particularly, the invention relates to hinge assemblies for movably mounting toilet seats on toilet bowls for movement between horizontal and vertical positions. Still more particularly, the invention relates to hinge assemblies arranged to bias the toilet seat to the raised or vertical position.
2. Reference to Prior Art
Numerous attempts to devise mechanisms for raising a toilet seat to a near vertical position, following its use in the horizontal or sitting position, have been made over many past years. Customarily, male users of toilet seats have urinated from the standing position, not infrequently contaminating the seat when left in the horizontal position, to the understandable discomfort of female users who may follow. Although anatomically male users are perfectly capable of performing this function from a sitting position, training to adapt to this mode is apparently so damaging to the masculine ego that a desire to remove the seat automatically from the target zone has persisted over the years.
Although some self-rising toilet seats are known, in general they have not been accepted. More particularly, prior self rising seats having been either aesthetically undesirable, complex, and expensive, or some combination of all three. Many call for attachment to the floor as well as to the seat, creating not only unsightly systems of levers and springs, but make dirt traps that are hard to clean. Others call for box-like structures to be added to the hinge area, again creating cleaning problems, or have enlarged and complex hinge devices that house torsion springs with adjusting devices that are expensive to manufacture.
Attention is directed to the following U.S. Pat. Nos.:
______________________________________ 566,621 2,772,422 4,338,690 2,074,318 2,814,049 4,426,743 2,214,323 2,954,565 4,428,083 2,410,854 3,316,561 4,470,161 2,440,232 4,133,062 4,551,866 2,636,185 4,195,372 4,592,097 ______________________________________